Results with Reading Mastery.

Everyone who graduates from high school truly literate starts to develop that literacy in the earliest grades. Educators must look to schools where students are achieving the highest literacy standards and identify the practices that enable them to achieve those goals. This report tells the stories of eight such schools--Portland Elementary School (Portland, Arkansas), Fort Worth Independent School District (Fort Worth, Texas), Wilson Primary School (Phoenix, Arizona), Lebanon School District (Lebanon, Pennsylvania), Park Forest-Chicago Heights School District 163 (Chicago, Illinois), Roland Park Elementary/Middle School (Baltimore, Maryland), City Springs Elementary School (Baltimore, Maryland), and Eshelman Avenue Elementary (Lomita, California). The stories in the report describe the history of each school, the challenges each faced, and some attempts to meet those challenges. Following the report's case studies, an appendix of research regarding using the "Reading Mastery" program has been included--the program has been used by the eight schools to bring about demonstrable positive effects on reading achievement. The school stories in the report include a focus on these results. According to the report, the schools serve children with a range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and geographic characteristics, and, as a group, they show an impressive reversal of the trends of failure, documenting improvements in performance and levels of achievement that often dramatically exceed those of their peers in similar schools. The schools and the reading program that are described in the report also share several other critically important common characteristics--they all have: implemented ongoing programs of professional development for their teachers; used assessments of student progress during the school year to ensure effective instruction; demonstrated the importance of the principal as the instructional leader; and created climates within their schools to encourage learning. (NKA)